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Taxes: Tax reform was passed with the promise that it soon would start to work wonders to kick economic growth into high gear and boost workers’ pay. Don’t look now, but it’s already working.

Gee, that was fast. Just one day after the tax bill was finally passed, companies were already scrambling to do things with their money. It’s an impressive list and, no doubt, not comprehensive:

AT&T’s CEO said the company will hand out bonuses of $1,000 to more than 200,000 of its workers in the U.S., thanks to tax reform.

Comcast NBCUniversal, not to be outdone, also handed out a special bonus of $1,000 to more than 1,000 employees, thanks to “passage of tax reform and the FCC’s action on broadband.”

Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg said his company will spend $300 million, with $100 million going to charity, $100 million for workforce development (including training and education for Boeing workers), and $100 million for “workplace of the future” infrastructure.

Fifth Third Bankcorp said it will give 13,500 employees a bonus and lift the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Wells Fargo also raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, and said it would donate $400 million to community and nonprofit groups in 2018.

As for support, some 255 groups and major corporations have weighed in with support for the tax cuts, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

While it is true many of the actual tax changes won’t be in effect for this tax year, many individuals will feel the benefits starting as early as February. That’s when the IRS is expected to issue withholding instructions to American businesses.

So many workers will suddenly see a nice increase in their paycheck, thanks to the Republicans’ tax reform. For the average earner, it will work out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 in additional income per year, according to estimates.

But as we’ve noted, businesses will feel the impact right away.

“Businesses will start adding more jobs and investing more in the United States immediately, and those effects … (will) probably be fully materialized over the course of the following several years,” Adam Michel, an economic policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told the online Daily Signal.

Voters may already be liking what they see. According to Rasmussen’s latest survey of likely U.S. voters, 43% now think America’s best days are in the future, compared to 36% who say they’re in the past.

“This is a shift from June, when 52% of voters thought America’s best days were already behind us, while just 36% thought they were still to come,” Rasmussen noted.

Despite complaints about the corporate tax cut that will bring the top rate down from 35% to 21%, that will benefit employees in both the short-run, as the bonuses and minimum wage hikes show, and the long-run, as new corporate investments turn into revenues and profits.

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